With the search for two missing miners partially blocked by the smoke and intense heat of an underground fire, rescue workers on the surface drilled down into a mine shaft in an effort to contact the missing men, but they got no response, officials said Saturday, according to AP. Nineteen miners escaped after a conveyor belt caught fire inside Aracoma Coal's Alma No. 1 mine Thursday evening, but two others never made it out. On Saturday, the 41st hour passed without contact from the two missing men. That was how long it had taken rescuers less than three weeks earlier to reach 12 miners trapped in another West Virginia mine; only one of those miners survived. Above the Alma mine, crews drilled a 200-foot (60-meter) hole to try to locate the missing miners by pounding on a steel drill bit and waiting for a response, but none came, said Jesse Cole, with the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration. A camera and a microphone lowered into the hole detected no sign of them, he said. Rescue crews inside the mine still couldn't get beyond the burning conveyor belt because of the intensity of the heat, said Doug Conaway, director of the state's Office of Miners' Health Safety and Training.
